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INFORMED SOURCES April 2000

Safety – Prescott 's ‘strip' tease

Stripping Railtrack of its safety responsibility seems to involve Railtrack carrying on as before while the HMRI has to get off the fence – can't be bad

Given the despicable way the Government spun against Railtrack after Ladbroke Grove (Informed Sources xx) I had great fun on the radio before Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott's statement on 22 February, pointing out that a U turn was inevitable. How so? Well, under the Health & Safety at Work Act Railtrack cannot not be responsible for safety on its network.

And when Prescott made the announcement in the house he only compounded matters by still using the ‘s' word. He claimed that the responsibility for deciding whether train companies are safe to operate was to be ‘stripped' from Railtrack and made the responsibility of the Health & Safety Executive. Well, sort of.

New company

In fact, the main change will be to make Railtrack's Safety & Standards Directorate a wholly owned subsidiary. To be called Railway Safety Ltd (RSL), the new company will take over responsibility for Group Standards and the Railway Group Safety Plan.

As you will recall the Government's concern was that S&SD would put profits ahead of safety. In fact, the real concern is that group standards are putting safety ahead of profits – for example, as in the case of the original proposals for controls for tilting trains. There will be no commercial restraining influence if an independent RSL, how shall I put it, attempts to eliminate risk from the system by subjecting new arrivals to standards unreasonably far above existing network practice.

RSL will have a board drawn from across the railway industry and an independent chairman. Its new chief executive, will not be a Director of Railtrack and any financial incentives will be linked to safety and not commercial performance. Indeed, there were suggestions that Railtrack staff transferring to RSL would have to sell any Railtrack shares – which at the beginning of March were daily plumbing new depths. So staffing could be a problem.

Now for the stripping. Under the railway safety case regime devised by the HSE for privatisation, S&SD is responsible for checking and accepting the safety cases of all those, such as train operators and contractors, with access to its network. But every safety case, or a change to a safety case, received by Railtrack has to be forwarded to the HSE which has 28 days to comment.

And, as reported previously in this column, of the 70 safety cases and approaching 400 chances accepted by Railtrack since 1994, in not one case has the HSE found it necessary to comment. Indeed, according to informed sources, the HSE has sometimes replied along the lines, 'sorry, we don't have the resources to check this submission.'

Anyway, under the new regime RSL will be responsible for the scrutiny of safety cases, but the HSE will now have to formally endorse what will be an advisory recommendation. This means confirming in writing that it is fully satisfied that the safety case holder would not import ‘undue risk' to the network.

Note that Railtrack Line will continue to have a duty under the Health & Safety at work Act to ensure that any risks imported onto the network are as low as reasonably practicable.

Similarly, responsibility for the formal audit of safety case holders will remain with RSL, but, once again, the results will be passed to the HSE which will 'consider whether appropriate follow up action is being taken'.

So all that Prescott 's much vaunted ‘stripping' achieves if to keep Railtrack responsible for safety approvals and auditing and make the HSE responsible for checking Railtrack's work and formally endorsing its findings.

According to informed sources, this has not gone down well with the HMRI which is desperately head hunting for a replacement for Deputy Chief Inspector Alan Cooksey, the last of the old school inspectors. For the HSE, stripping means finding people with the calibre to check safety cases and the courage to put their name to a formal endorsement in these litiginous times.

So plus ca change, etc? Not quite. These arrangements represent what Prescott called ‘an interim position'. The ‘final fate' of S&SD will be decided following Lord Cullen's report. So, just as RSL has been set up it could be all change again.

Up the line

From Connington, the new alignment runs to the west of the ECML, the first feature being the new Peterborough Parkway station provisionally on the A47. Continuing on the west side of the current ECML the new line's next feature is the connection to the Worksop-Sheffield line (to be electrified), followed shortly after by what is, in effect, a long chord to the Classic alignment, giving access to Doncaster.

Shortly after, the new line crosses the classic route to swing west of Doncaster , where there will be a second parkway station at Armthorpe on the M18 (Junction 4).

Continuing northward the new line takes over the existing ECML trackbed north of Shaftholme Junction. From this point to Temple Hurst junction the line is straight, making it an ideal alignment for high speed operation as a two track railway.

From Temple Hurst , the High Speed Line follows the Selby Diversion Line where the curves were designed for 140mile/h. At Hambleton there will be a junction with the east-west route to Leeds which will be electrified and become the new main line to Leeds . The high speed running ends at Colton Junction.

To maintain capacity where the existing ECML is taken over, a ‘new' section of classic ECML will be created by upgrading and electrifying the freight only line from Shaftholme Junction to Knottingley and then northward through Sherburn in Elmet and Church Fenton to rejoin today's route at Colton Junction.

. At the Northern end of the ECML, the Leamside Line (Tursdale Junction-Newcastle) is upgraded and electrifed, to become the new Classic ECML, by-passing Durham . And to complete the capacity improvement a 14 mile section of High Speed Line will be built between Killingworth, just north of Longbenton and Chevington, north of Morpeth. This will provide a shorter alignment and by-pass the Morpeth curves.